Air Patriots Review

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If any developer wants a piece of the Android tower defense pie, said developer must come correct. It could be said that even more important than just glitzy graphics and slick animations, the elements of the game have to be tweaked to keep people’s attention.

Well, Amazon (via Lemon Team) throws its hat into the tower defense gaming ring with Air Patriots, a creative, somewhat daring take on the gaming favorite.

The base gameplay is familiar. I, the off-screen puppeteer, directed a squadron of planes tasked with preventing enemy tanks from getting from point A to B. My squadron comprised of planes of different capabilities and rates of creation. Now, what makes Air Patriots unique is how my units move. Basically, they were planes… they moved around, and I could also use my finger to give them a flight path of limited length. There were two, windy paths for the tanks to take; as to be expected, different tanks had different values: varying degrees of armor, speed and such. I was able to carve out a flight path with my finger, and my plane did the shooting when in range. When the life bar on the tank was completely drained, the tank was destroyed. Sometimes, the the destroyed/disappearing tanks left behind parts for a while that I had to claim quickly by tapping; such parts could be used for my own equipment.

Different types of planes and weapons were created for usage at different rates, and tapping the ready ones deployed them immediately into play. Now, packing as many planes as possible into the playing grid wasn’t always productive; the developer made it possible for planes to collide with one another, meaning that flight plans could be interfered with inadvertently by my own planes.

Leveling up increased the play factors. Graphically, the game was well done, incorporating nice animations and fitting sounds. The in-app purchasing system was convenient but non-essential.